American Folk Art, NY. Traveled to: Philadelphia Museum of Art: March 10-May 17, 1998; High Museum of Art: July 14-September 20, 1998; Amon Carter Museum and The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth: October 31, 1998-January 24, 1999; Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester: February 20-April 18, 1999; Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University: May 15-August 15, 1999; Museum of American Folk Art: September 19- December 11, 1999

Our Night of Life
In dreams we float
To other worlds
And other shores,
To salvage what we may,
To build and beautify
Our night of life.

Eugene Von Bruenchehein, Freelance Artist, Poet and Sculptor, Inovator [sic], Arrow maker and Plant man, Bone artifacts constructor, Photographer and Architect, Philosopher, never really found contentment in the real world, except in his love for his wife Marie. His was the world of dreams, ideas, of escaping, traveling to far off undiscovered worlds beyond Earth.

I journeyed to the edge of Universe
Where stars collide and end in dust
The junk yard of the Universe
Where inky darkness lasts from
millenium to millenium
Far Far into the unwanted portion of time. . .
Born in the year that Halley 's comet passed by our planet, Von Bruenchenhein spent much of his life exploring the unseen and unexplained relationships inherent in living things human, cosmic, and everything in between. He sought and provided answers to the largest of questions. Why is there no wall beyond the fringe of Universe? Because something always lies beyond a wall, And because no Universe can be contained. Our Night of Life celebrates this extraordinary vision, through which nature is infinitely fluid, continually revealing new aspects of itself.

It is now twenty-four years since Eugene Von Bruenchenhein 's works came into public light, and since that time our examination of his work still has not had the time to fully comprehend the many facets of his artistic vision, within the many mediums in which he worked. The works themselves are journeys into their meanings, but the artist 's writings less well know than the paintings, sculptures, and photos add yet another dimension to his world. Von Bruenchenhein formulated elaborate Bruenchenesian theories, postulating on the complexity of nature and our ability to know it. In one selection he suggests that only one of natures planes is visible through a scientific lens:

We consider ourselves so smart and yet after the
great length of time man has lived on Earth he has just
scratched the surface of knowledge. . . As far as science goes
we have only looked in the mirror, not [at] what is concealed
behind. . .

Von Bruenchenhein spent hours looking at drops of water through a microscope, and was equally concerned with a macrocosmic order, evident in musings and paintings about the worlds beyond ours. He made exceptionally convincing paintings of Lines of Force Contained and Lines of Force Released, pictorializing what science could only express in numeric formulae. Now, one only needs to pick up a New York Times daily newspaper in which a recent photograph by the Hubbell Telescope is featured revealing some amazing new cosmic cataclysm or phenomena to convince us that, indeed, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein had already traveled there.

In that vein of awe and respect, the Carl Hammer Gallery re-visits the art work by this amazing personality in hopes that we may thus honor him and his unique vision. Confronted once again with his limitless ability to interpret organic potentiality in paintings and photographs, and sculptures of clay, bone, and concrete, Von Bruenchenhein 's works remind us that the mirror has another dimension. And thanks to his remarkably expansive mind, we too can marvel as we travel with him in journeys to the edge of the universe.